Celebrating with General Conference

Last week I did my final edits before printing and turning in my master's thesis. My supervisor was originally going to get me her edits over the weekend, instead I got them Monday through Thursday. I was able to get all the revisions done, but there was no time for questions or seeing if my edits actually fixed things. I found out from another student that they were also waiting for last minute revisions from their supervisor. Trying to complete a big research project in 9-10 months is difficult!

When I had my lunch break from writing outside, Shade rested underneath me. 

After I finally made my last revision on Thursday I went and got it printed! It was so relieving to just have that done! I celebrated with lunch at Subway. 

The next day I turned it in and had lunch with some of the other MRes students at TGIF's to celebrate. It was a HUGE lunch, but a great way to end this milestone. 

Hayley and Nick enjoying their first TGIF's visit

You'd think that this means I'm done with my Master's, but unfortunately that is not the case. Now I wait for reviewers to go over it and it is likely I will have to make revisions in late November to get the Master's degree. In the meantime - this week I am creating a journal article version of the thesis so I can get it published. As much as I would like to just be done with it, my hope is that by publishing it someone won't have to go through all the frustration that I went through. With my research, anyone studying tiger vocalisations will have a baseline of what to expect and what to investigate. On top of that, I also need to clean up stuff at the lab, make sure all my files are in order, and create a guide so that anyone else could use or follow up with what I accomplished. 

My weekend was pretty good. Friday night (after my huge lunch) there was a baptism for an amazing Sri Lankan family! Dev is one of my young women and this was also her 14th birthday so unlike the typical baptism, it was practically a feast afterwords and many people even brought gifts for Dev. 

Dev and her mom

The highlight of the night wasn't all the food or decorations, but the spirit that was present! I did not know much about how they came to know The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but I'm glad they shared their story. They are a wonderful family and I'm happy to have them join our ward family. 

The rest of the weekend was focused on watching General Conference. I downloaded the HD video podcasts from iTunes in advance and so I could easily watch them and take notes on my Kindle. The Saturday morning session was awesome, but I got so tired through the afternoon I fell asleep. I decided later I am just going to have go over all the talks multiple times. I don't want to go into a lot of detail on talks, but what really stood out to me was how the Lord loves me as I am and to show my love for him I need to show love to others. Two things I need to remember and work on. It's so wonderful to have modern-day prophets and apostles to guide us! 

Sunday afternoon Matt and I spent time with our friend Dean and Crystal. The only problem was that I was extremely tired and Crystal wasn't feeling so great either. We left earlier than we had planned and I immediately crashed. A few hours later I got up, but felt I easily could have slept the whole night! I think all of my lack of sleep from the previous week finally caught up to me. 

The next day I had scheduled a massage in the city from a groupon. It was just what I needed and my body felt less tense, but my mind never stops thinking about things so it is really hard to fully relax. Matt planned to meet me in the city but as he was on his way my phone died! I found an Optus mobile shop and they let me plug my phone so I called Matt and waited there for him. We decided after that I need one of those portable power sticks. 

Part of Darling Quarter in Sydney

We had lunch in the shopping centre there and Matt hated it! He ordered a pizza at a kebab shop and the kebab meat has a distinct flavour that he did not like. I had a spinach and feta gozleme which he said tasted like seaweed. I liked it, but I still don't get how he thought my food tasted like seaweed.  Afterwards we met with a guy to look at some bikes we found on gumtree (AUS equivalent of craigslist). We will make that decision today, but hopefully we will have some bikes soon so we can explore all the surrounding parks! 

Matt and I also celebrated my thesis completion by going out to Max Brenner. I had a waffle with fruit and Matt had strawberry and cream crepes. He discovered that the crepes were good, but the chocolate was AMAZING. He licked all the chocolate off both our plates with his finger. We decided next time he should just get the chocolate shot. It was a great way to end a crazy long week, although I am definitely going to need to get back to working out!

Now it's back to more work!

The Final Countdown

As time has gone buy I have thought a lot about a few blogs I really want to do, but right now just isn't the time. So look for some interesting blogs in the future!

This will be short and sweet because 1. I don't have a lot of time, 2. I don't have any pictures to contribute, and 3. my life is pretty boring.

What is life like right before you turn in the written thesis of your year-long's work you ask? Busy, awful, and one big headache! To start, a couple of weeks ago my wonderful bio-stats helper let me know I had done the order incorrect on my model. Little did I know this would create a fourth variable being very significant and would really need a four-dimensional plot to help visually interpret the results! 4-dimensional plots were beyond my ability in R and created a lot of stress. After talking to my supervisor, we realised we could omit that variable and stick with my two-dimensional plot... phew!!!

Later, I had to give a presentation on my project in front of the other students and some of the biology department that showed up. I'm not nervous typically with giving presentations, but I still hadn't figured some things out and I was most afraid they would ask difficult statistical questions. Luckily, I could easily answer their questions and another milestone was completed. 

With that over, I had tons of writing to do! Each day I finished writing a section and sent it to my supervisor (except she isn't allowed to see the discussion). My mom and step-sister were also willing to take a look at the finished draft including the discussion and now I am just waiting on feedback from everyone while also doing my own edits. The final printed product is due this Friday and needless to say there is no time for several drafts to be made. Since, there is no thesis defense in Australia, I won't get any other feedback until the reviewer's decision. The reviewers give you a final grade, which may include compulsory revisions to be made before the award can be accepted. As much as I may wish to be completely done with this already, I have revisions to do now, possibly more in late November, and next week I have to make a shorter journal article version to try and publish. The work is never over!

I know I will get this done and am looking forward to moving on from this! I can't wait to finally leave behind all the stress, politics, and frustration involved in my Master's. I'm happy with what I have been able to accomplish despite all the roadblocks I've had, but I am so glad I am not jumping into another three years of it with a PhD. Where do I go now? I have no idea. I will be spending the next three months de-stressing, living life, and doing some serious contemplating about what to do next. I trust the Lord to guide me to my true 'purpose' (see figure) and perhaps it is with animals and perhaps not. I'm lucky that although I've spent so much of my life seeking a career with animals, I would be happy in many different careers. With all the student debt I have accrued, I think it may be time to find a career that I can enjoy and still pay off debt.